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Friday, 16 September 2011

place4BRICS

Amoo Venture Capital Advisory is proud to announce the successful launch of place4BRICS,
London's first community for technology entrepreneurs and investors
from or interested in conducting business in the BRICS countries. The
first event took place on the September 14th, 2011 and featured perspectives on an opportunity in each country put
forward by relevant experts, which was followed by an insightful round
of Q&A and an opportunity to network. Speakers on the panel and some
key takeaways from the day were:

Brazil:AvronOlshewsky, South African born telecoms entrepreneur.
Avron started two businesses in Brazil and spoke about the size of the
market, key regions for growth and the cultural nuances he had to learn -
such as Brazilians often placing personal relationships above business -
and adapt to while setting up his operations. Russia:Evgeny Shadchnev, entrepreneur in residence at Forward Venture Partners.
Evgeny's key insight on the start up scene was that Russia presents an
environment in which funding exists in abundance but there is a dearth
of key skills, most notably business acumen. Businesses looking to
exploit opportunities in this region need to bring these with them and
actively mentor their staff and teams. India:Lipi Begum, PhD student at the London School of Fashion.
Lipi’s academic research covers the techniques used to market global
products to urban Indian women. Her talk offered a fresh perspective to
be considered in finding a balance between global and local (“glocal”)
marketing strategies. China:Lu Fei, investment banker at Societe Generale.
Lu Fei presented an analysis of Chinese technology behemoth Tencent and
honed in on their instant messenger QQ, the world’s largest instant
messenger. She tied the success of the messenger in China to the social
effect of China's one-child policy where youth, in the absence of
siblings, actively tryto form associations over the internet and are
more open to connecting with strangers, thereby disrupting Western
notions of online privacy. South Africa:Rupert Cruise, serial entrepreneur in the field of clean energy generation. Rupert discussed socio-political changes the country has been through, its
demographic diversity and the grassroots innovation taking place. One
lamentation of his, however, was that the cost of Internet connectivity
is prohibitively high (almost 4 times the cost in the UK) and this
presents a bottleneck for tech start ups.

The
key insight from the event was how strikingly similar each of these
countries are, yet how much they differ as consumer markets. The talks
led to networking and we take the fact that we had to be asked to leave
the venue as a positive sign that meaningful business conversations were
in play.

Total number of signups: 74 Total attendees: 60 Profile of the audience: As
expected, the audience was multi-cultural with people from Brazil,
Russia, China, India and South Africa as well as other emerging regions
such as Bangladesh and Nigeria. Professionally, a range of occupations
was represented spanning investment banking, management consulting,
trade association members, entrepreneurs, engineering students and
technologists.

Sponsors: Amoo Venture Capital Advisory & Queen Mary, University of London Organising committee: Nzube Ufodike, Nikhil Kalanjee, Naunidh Virk, Enock KoolaVenue: Room 1.13, The Bancroft Building Queen Mary, University of London 329 Mile End Road
E1 4NS Future Dates: Every second Wednesday of the month: the next event is a networking session to be held on the 12th of October.

3 comments:

This is one innovation and opportunity that a starting entrepreneur should not miss. Should there be a chance that this sign up will open up soon, anyone interested in forming a limited liability company or has already formed one should sign up to benefit from the team of experts within the group.